


Rise and Go

by sprocket



Category: Alliance-Union - C. J. Cherryh
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-23 07:40:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17076161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sprocket/pseuds/sprocket
Summary: He went to Elene first.





	Rise and Go

**Author's Note:**

  * For [arpent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arpent/gifts).



The dockmaster's offices were in the same disarray as the rest of Pell station: disarray, Elene thought soberly, that might take years to repair. The mainday dockmaster had disappeared in the riots that had killed Damon's father; the alterday dockmaster had survived Mazian's purges, but barely. Recovery was possible, the psychs agreed; but Mattie Terner was not in any shape to manage dockside on a slow day, let alone the barely controlled chaos of the last month. It was the same from Blue One right through White Nine, by Damon's report: scores of senior Admin dead or half-dead from the exhaustion and terror of Lukas and Mazian's administrations, or Union's brief claim on Pell; midlevel and junior staff in little better shape, managing posts they'd had no expectation they would ascend to. 

And so Elene walked - waddled, she thought critically, catching a glimpse of herself in a scarred store window - from dockside offices to Council and back, close to due, arches aching with each step. An interim assistant dockmaster, no matter how hap merited a door that shut in the Dockmaster's warren of conference spaces, cubicles, and offices: as soon as she could, she planned to take advantage to rid her swollen feet of the confining formal shoes a Council visit required. 

"Quen," a voice called as she slipped in the offices. Ry Altener, at the front desk: Elene smoothed the irritation from her features as she turned toward Altener. "Your friend Mr. Talley's here to see you," Altener said. "I told him to go back to your office." 

Elene frowned. Unusual, for Josh to call on her: more unusual to call at the office, at this time of day. "Did he say what he was here about?" 

"No. Not one for small talk, is he?" Altener paused, her face considering. "Seemed a bit on edge, but who isn't, these days." 

Elene shrugged. "Thanks, Ry. Hold my calls for a bit, will you?"

Josh was looking at - or through - a painting the previous occupant had left, and Elene hadn't bothered taking down, swirls of Downer-influenced geometries contrasted with and blended into human design, when she stepped through the door. "Josh," she said, which called his attention, sharp and focused, pale eyes unnervingly direct. He accepted her hug, awkward as all hugs were awkward now, every motion a compromise around her soon-to-be-born child. "How is-" he gestured at her belly. 

"The doctors say she's doing well," she replied. "Tea? Water?" He shook his head. "Let's sit down, I just walked from the lifts." That meant moving a pile of hardcopy reports and TranSlates from the office's second chair to the the little fold-down table perpendicular to her crowded desk, before he could sit down. Elene took her own seat, trying not to sigh with relief. "How are you? Is there a problem with the job?" 

He shrugged. "It's going as well as can be expected. Comp verification isn't difficult, just tedious." 

Painstaking, important work, after the changes the Mazianni were known to have made, after Union's brief access to Pell's systems; and sometimes very technical. She had been surprised Damon had suggested it. An armscomp board and station systems hadn't much in common, beyond theory, but the reports that had trickled out from the merchanters working with Pell's remaining techs had spoken well of Josh's contributions. 

The work in secure core access, locked away near Central, made up the bulk of Josh's time outside his room at the old merchanter's hospice and their apartment. He'd confessed some nervousness at walking the halls alone; Damon blamed the War, the riots, the months of hiding. Elene had listened, but thought those nerves had more to do with Adjustment than Damon was willing to admit. She loved her stationer husband, loved his idealism, his kindness; but any gentleness that had survived the Battle of Pell had endured, she thought, through a little blindness, a refusal to believe in the compromised reality they lived in, the things he and Josh had done to survive. 

Maybe that was stationer hopes: if they pretended hard enough, the world would be what they wanted it to be. 

Though, she thought, a little ruefully, stationers were not the only humans to wish and cajole a better universe into existence. She'd refused to believe herself the last of the Quens, the only survivor of _Estelle_ ; and soon, she would not be. 

Perhaps that was why she and Damon had held on, held together, for this long.

She sorted through other possibilities. Stationer trouble? Conflict with the grim, unsmiling techs lent from _Norway_? A run-in with some merchanter? "What's on your mind?" she finally asked.

"I heard that Mallory's talking about leaving." 

"That's the rumor, yes," she agreed. 

"When Norway goes, I want to go with them." 

"With Mallory and her people?" she exclaimed, surprised. "Josh, _why_?" 

For the first time, he shifted in the chair, looked away and back at her. "I can't- stay here," he managed. "On a station. Not now." 

"What's the trouble?" she asked. She bit back what she knew Damon would say: _is it the Adjustment, Josh?_ "If someone's giving you a problem-" 

"It's not that sort of trouble," he interrupted, harsh. "It's... what I was, when I was Union." He stopped; she waited it out. "Special operations," he managed, eventually. "It's not... comfortable, to live here, remembering... what I did, before." 

_Before_ covered abysses. Before Pell. Before Russell's. Earlier, perhaps. The anguish in Josh's direct gaze was clear. 

"You want to leave," she said, hurt. And hurting for him. "Up and go... what, off to the Deep? Try to forget us?" 

" _No_ ," he half shouted. He caught his breath, trembling. "No. I can't - I learned comp for infiltration, on Union operations. Why not use that to defend the people I- the station? And later, when things are different, I can come back. At least for a while. Sometimes." A tightening of the lips that might have been a smile. "Even _Norway_ has station-calls, once in a while." 

"What the Fleet takes doesn't come back," she snapped, the same words she'd told Damon, once. "I've lost enough, Josh, I won't lose you too. Damon can pull the strings, get the psychs to do a look-over-" 

"-and if they say to try Adjustment again? I don't want that, I don't want to lose what I have here-" 

"Then _don't leave us_."

They were both silent, then. 

"Mallory _was_ Fleet," Josh said, eventually. "Was. Not is." 

"I hadn't pegged you for an optimist." 

"Damon talked to her - I don't know what he said. But after, she broke with Mazian. Something's changed. We've all changed. Maybe for the better. That's all I can hope." 

She took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. "This is really what you want?" she asked. It was the qustion her parents, her uncles, her cousins had asked all her life, about big decisions: _is this what you really want, Elene?_ It stung, in the way so many of those memories did; and dimly, she felt surprise along with the pain, to find that Josh had been swept into those associations: family, to be reckoned with - but not to be held back. Not even for worry, like the worry that had been hidden behind her father's and uncles' grumbling when she'd chosen her year with Damon and with Pell; not for love, like her family's love when she'd walked off _Estelle_ that last time, mother and cousins catching her for a last hug, a touch, one more until-next-ship-call. She had hoped... she realized now, she'd hoped her daughter would have one uncle who understood the Deep, to balance Damon's stationbound relatives. She'd made assumptions, half planned around that expectation... relied on Josh like family. 

He nodded, as tense as her, for his own reasons. 

"If you're sure, I won't stop you." 

"Thank you," he said, tightly. "Thank you, Elene." 

She pushed her chair close enough to rest a hand on his shoulder.

"Have you talked to Damon about this?" she asked. 

"Not yet." Something that might have been a smile twisted his mouth. "I thought it would be easier to talk to you, first." 

Elene let out a sound as akin to a laugh as Josh's expression was to a smile. "And maybe enlist some help?" 

"And maybe enlist some help," he echoed. "Please? This isn't goodbye for ever. I'll write. Even _Norway_ has to make station-calls now and again... and there's nowhere else for Mallory or her people, is there? But how do I say that to Damon? He'll hit the overhead." 

"Tell me a little more, and we'll see," she said, missing him already.


End file.
